To all those brave adventurer's that sought to take up the task of vanquishing evil and possibly saving the world, I thank you.

But...

I have decided to put an end to this campaign world as it is currently known and restart anew.

I have some interest from various players in my new game that I am planning in the same world, but post-cataclysm. There will be little bits and peices of the history of the world and the gods as they were, but things will have changed quite a bit.

I am in the process of posting up background information for the world how it is now in my DM screen, then into the recources. After I am confident that I have covered enough to garner proper interest in the game and have enough content to get the game running better than my old one did then I will start it up.

As an apology to all my old players, those who are still around, you all have invitations into my new game if you'll have me. Even though I didn't show myself to be consistent and responsible with the last game I started I can assure you I that I am in a more stable place in my life having left a lot of my youth behind.

This new game will be based upon picking up the peices in a world changed by a cataclysm that shook the heavens and the earth. Mortals died by the millions and gods battled from the depths of the abyss to the highest of heavens in a war that changed the multiverse and even left the gods nearly extinct. A whole new and exciting world is born from the ashes of the old as the remnants of the races vie for control.

In the following weeks I will be posting more specifics of who and what survived, what knowledges and races still exist and what new ones have been born. I will be showing a lot more thought and explanation than in my last game and I hope everyone likes the various twists I have added to this post-cataclysmic setting. For the public view the first thing I will be posting is an epic made by a famous member of the Alumni of the Sun describing the last days as the gods battled across the skies of the prime and the very heavens and hells. Not all details of the end times will be revealed (except to the admins who look behind my DM screen) at first, but there will be many secrets and relics of the past the characters will have opportunities to discover throughout play.

I will be a little more restrictive as to what books are available in this game as the world is new and I'd like to take this opportunity to design my own prestige-class system that is campaign specific. This too will I reveal before the game starts as well as a few of the more widely-known prestige classes that will be available. Others I will keep hidden behind the DM screen until such a time as it becomes available to the players through discovery and roleplaying. I had given some thought to tweaking the classes to make the game even more of my own, but decided against it because of how time consuming it'd be and the fact that it'd probably come out unbalanced. I know how to deal with the imbalances that already exist in the core rules and don't need to throw myself a curve-ball. Some magics will be unknown and unavailable in the world at the start of play, but there is always the chance of unearthing something from the past in a long-forgotten tomb or lair. Divine magics will be restricted to include the presense of half-gods - this I will explain in more detail later.

Feel free to ask any questions if any come to mind and you'd rather not wait for me to get around to posting that info. A lot of material is already rough-drafted in various notepads I've been scribbling in over the past several months and I'll be polishing up my grammer and spelling and posting it here starting today.

Any information from the Into the Wilds campaign has been moved into the End Times forum in case you'd like to refer back to info from the past or your old characters.

Is this to use the episodic idea you had in Character Acquisition (post-cataclysm vignettes, if you will), or is it a regular-style campaign?

I may just move my old character in entirety into the future, or I may come up with something new. Depends on whether the concept makes sense in the new setting, or on the materials you'll be allowing.

No this is not the episodic idea I was talking about. That didn't have any interest in it, unlike this. Regular style campaign. Explorer's of a new world trying to carve a niche out for themselves, their race, or their gods. Adventurer's may also have a desire to reconnect with their roots and restore their lineage's homelands to their former glory or uncover ancient magics that are now lost to the lands. I have high hopes for this game being able to span a game time of many years with the right players (/knocks on wood) and reaching high levels.

The concept for personality and concept would be able to carry over, although the background would need to be gone over to reflect what happened to the Susaliy in the end times. Your new character could be a great-great-great-great-great-great-grandaughter of your old character that survived by living on the mainland in Frosthaven when the cataclysm rent the world apart. Mechanically I may wish to restrict you to being a monk with a special feat allowing the use of a halberd as a monk weapon (for purposes of flurry of blows) as I'd like to keep this game a little closer to core-rules until the game progresses and prestige classes start to become available. I'm designing my own campaign specific prestige classes of which a lot are very similar to the standard ones in the DMG, but with their own background flavor added in along with minor tweaks to their abilities. This process is of secondary importance though to getting the background information posted. Now that I have my character in forgotten nearly done I can spend the next day or so transfering some of my notes to the forums.

After having some time to think about the new class we put together for Sonomi I realized it could be done similar with core rules. I'll be making a prestige class that will cover the old traditional Susaliyan warriors fighting style. This will be one of the exclusive prestige classes. More to come on the subject later.

I'm working on and off today uploading and rewriting content from its scrall of notes that I have, images of the world and other concept art I've worked on.

After having some time to think about the new class we put together for Sonomi I realized it could be done similar with core rules.

”

But have you considered the sentimental value of the work I put into that character? It was time-consuming, it was contentious, it was perhaps even unnecessary, but it's what I wanted, and I'm in love with the result. I could never feel the same pride or satisfaction if the character changed so fundamentally.

Originally Posted by LeadPal
But have you considered the sentimental value of the work I put into that character? It was time-consuming, it was contentious, it was perhaps even unnecessary, but it's what I wanted, and I'm in love with the result. I could never feel the same pride or satisfaction if the character changed so fundamentally.

”

I like the result, but I feel my love for it could grow with some minor tweaks applied. I feel you would feel more pride and satisfaction in improving upon your idea - all is keeping with the spirit of the classes fundamentals. You put up a valid argument, but there are factors such as mechanical balance and placement in the world. I'd like the role kept over, an inspiration for one of my new concepts, Mastery Classes. I'll post you a teaser of my thoughts on Prestige and Mastery Classes in the Resources section after I post this reply.

Perhaps you can help me dissect the class into a Prestige Class and a Master Class. Let the original class of old help inspire what the scattered remains of the nation of Susaliy were able to learn so far about the long lost traditional Yanoi warriors of their once great nation. Another little teaser of how the world changed... Susaliy ended up covered in a layer of magma - yes, the whole continent - then subsequently submerged to the bottom of the ocean. The culture has survived and bloodline preserved to some extent, but a lot was lost due to their homeland vanishing from the surface world. If some brave adventurer of the lost Susaliyan nation took upon a quest to venture to the bottom of the sea and find its way Through the lava to the great cities underneath they would undoubtedly find relics of the old kingdom and even scrolls of information with complete information on how to train 'true' Yanoi warriors (the class as you built it).

Or another idea that I am more inclined to do is that if you were to get all 5 levels of the yanoi inspired prestige class I (we) build and all ten levels of its mastery class superior (which will cover all the abilities of the original class you (we) built between the two 'advanced' classes) then that character would have finally realized the perfect mastery of the form of the Yanoi Warriors of the last age and would convert all his classes to the original Yanoi levels, offering little difference in overall mechanics, but for the satisfaction and flavor of the character. Also, forever more you would have recovered the knowledge to train 'true' Yanoi warriors and in essence 'unlocked' a 'lost' class and making it available like an expansion.

I'm not completely scrapping my old campaign, I'm just moving it forward to make exploration type adventures more fun. You have the bonus of having not only playing in both ages (albeit too briefly to even call it an adventure - hell, you didn't even meet the rest of the characters), but also of helping me flesh out some of the background of the Susaliyans by intellectual prodding and designing a new class for my game. Like I told you when we were bouncing ideas back and forth, Susaliy was left vague so that I could go back and fill in the details later and to have a mysterious oriental themed culture in my world. Until you asked to play a character when I moved the campaign to the forums I had never had one of my f2f campaign's players ask about the nation or encounter any of its residents in a campaign that ran from 2nd level to 22nd level over the span of more than 3 years.

I had always wanted to design a more oriental monk-type of character, but never got around to it until you started showing me your thoughts on the matter. I spent a lot of time helping tweak that class with you to make it balanced too as well as me and Lune designing her Mooncursed Druid class at his request and I don't intend to let either of those efforts to amount to a waste of time. They are inspirations for the flavor and mechanical spins I'm wanting to inject into my world.

My new idea of classes is this:

NPC classes: average power, majority of people in the world - at least 65% of the population
Core PC classes: notable power, common to the world - around 35% of the population
Prestige classes: extraordinary power, rare in the world - about 9% of the population
Mastery classes: phenomenal power, very rare or even unique in the world - less than 1% of the population

Given that idea I started thinking about your character and the cultural niche it'd inject into the game and how it would fill the void of my 'monk' prestige class. Same with Lune's character as an inspiration on a shape shifter prestige class and Mastery class.

These classes will in no way make pursuing ones core class to it's full potential uninteresting or pointless. I would encourage players to help me make some of the prestige classes if they were motivated and had ideas on a particular build. Present the mechanical and roleplaying ideas you have and I'll work with you to make it meld in with the setting.

The prestige classes presented in the Wheel of Time d20 game did a great job of helping the characters feel the richness of your worlds cultures and societies. The idea that there is an 'average' fantasy world is ludicrous to me. I like my players to be able to truly understand what I'm trying to convey to them in my portrayals of my setting.

I like the result, but I feel my love for it could grow with some minor tweaks applied. I feel you would feel more pride and satisfaction in improving upon your idea - all is keeping with the spirit of the classes fundamentals. You put up a valid argument, but there are factors such as mechanical balance and placement in the world.

”

I'll try, then. Remember, the character I have unfinished business with is Scarlet Knight Sonomi, and no one else; I'm happy that my work on her helped to shape the setting, but I never truly had the pleasure of playing her. As excited I am to finally get that chance, I'm worried that I might lose it anyways by changing too much.

I'll need to consider what defines the character, not just in mechanics, but also in background: there are a few points that definitely need to remain the same. If it turns out that the setting can no longer support these defining points, I'll just try to build something new.

Let me know what it is that you treasure most in your character and I'll try to keep true to that most of all when I shape the setting around all things pertaining to the Susaliyans.

As I said though... I intend to leave a large part of their culture lost to the world at large in the beginning to add to the enjoyment of rediscovering it. That doesn't mean that your character couldn't include privileged information or abilities, I just want you to keep that in mind when thinking about it.

The Susaliyan society of old has a lot to do with the future of the setting. Their magics and even some of their technologies would be a great asset to reclaiming the lands in the name of the humans.

Your character build will always be there for you. You put a lot of hard work into that class. I love it!

I will begin shuffling notes around and see what hard copy notes I have left after the move. Most of my adventures are originally brainstormed and generated in spiral notepads and then put somewhere with no indication of what treasures it may hold. The story arc is all still fresh in my head though, so even if reconstruction of the adventures I had in store is needed it won't be too hard. I hate it when I spend dozens of hours on something just to lose it though!

Susaliy's homeland nation has been taken by the ocean in large part, but this is far from saying that they are gone. Two separate people came to be in the wake of the catastrophes caused by the tumultuous events that reshaped the world.

In fact a small faction of Susaliyan nobility actually managed to salvage one of their great cities from the worst of the damage caused by the Sundering. The city is still located on the island nearly a mile under the ocean. The residents of this city, the most preserved of any from the previous age, are largely a secret from the mainlanders. They prefer their solitude and go to great lengths to ensure their secret is safe from the mainlanders and their cousins; other Susaliyans that survived to Sundering. Their magics keep the heavy oceans from their city and powerful wards guard the secrets to their superior magic and technology that survived from the previous age. Trade has nearly come to a halt, but there are some goods that still must be obtained from the mainlanders. The Susaliyans still trade their metalurgic arts and other various crafted items they were famous for before the Sundering (such as leather goods and fine clothing.)

I have more but must run at the moment. I will add more later. Hopefully this will be enough to get your wheels turning.

Sadly for him the game that I plan on starting is based a few hundred years in the future from the timeline your guy was in.

That is not to say that when said game resumes you could not have practically the same character, just not exactly the same guy as he would have died from either the massive cataclysm that ensued in the meantime or old age.

...........................

I envisioned Into the Wilds to be an exploratory campaign and rather than base the game in the end times of an age I decided to proceed forward through a cataclysm. This serves the exploratory game feel I originally imagined as well as serving the dual purpose of putting to rest a world that I had ran games in for 5+ years in a long standing face to face game I GM'd. I do not have contact with two of the players anymore and the other doesn't have time to commit to a face to face game anymore - nor do I. We have both put on some years and have young children that deserve our attention first and foremost. Anyhow... I thought it fitting to bring that world to an end in a mighty climatic cataclysm and see what I can create from the ashes of all the good ideas I had back then. I have matured and so therefore so should my game. The world was created around the events of a campaigning group that strived to save the world over and over again in a very dangerous universe. I created my own pantheon of dieties, mapped and wrote extensive notes of the various places in the world, and made most of the adventures I ran while weaving together some of the more popular 3E modules of the time into a story line that stretched from 2nd level to 22nd. The characters were major movers that set into motion the events that eventually led to the cataclysm. This was not a failure however, they saved what they could and prevented the Prime Material Plane and their world from being destroyed completely. I hope to inspire yet more epic campaigns with my world in the years to come and ORP shall serve as my drawing board. Don't be surprised if you see elements of the adventures ran here and the worlds I create in a cheap novel somewhere someday.

Unless ORP plans on sinking into the ocean like the ancient lands of Susaliya I may bring some of my more ambitious friends from my irl gaming group into the fold so we can use the forums to supplement our current games for in between sessions or even to resurrect my homebrew.

I'm cataloging the treasures I have entrusted to ORP for safekeeping over the years into hard copies to flesh out and publish some of my adventures and perhaps undertake the mighty task that would be putting my homebrew into a setting that others could take a crack at.